Friday, 5 July 2013

Bucharest - "A fart in the air con"

I DID IT! I actually got off my arse and went somewhere. I'd tell you my heroic tales of

Rah-cksacks: Imperative Gap Yah Equipment.

rescuing marsupials from bush fires, eradicating poverty and hosting synchronised swimming lessons in the Amazon River, but I'd be lying. In reality I went on a 3 week jolly around Romania and Budapest with my friend Poppy. If you followed my travels on Facebook, you may be under the impression that all we did was drink cheap beer, enjoy the sun and drink cheap beer, but you'd be (partly) wrong, and I'm writing this to quash those misconceptions. I'll divide the posts geographically into the five areas we visited, starting with Bucharest.Ladies and Gentlemen, the fasten seat belt sign has now been activated, so please return to your seats and remain there until Captainfuntimesontheroad is in full flow, at which point you can abandon ship happy in the knowledge that you've given me another view on my blog. Here goes...Tuesday, June 4thPoppy and I awoke at the crack of dawn. 'Who's Dawn?!' I hear you cry. All I have to say to that is please wash your dirty mind out with soap. It was 4am, and our inhumanely large rucksacks were packed and ready. The airport departure was a bit of a groggy blur, but the bird who shat colossally on the car windscreen did not prove to be a good luck omen. Getting Ellie Goulding's song 'Explosions' stuck in one's head when going through airport security is most unfortunate for a start. Our flight left late, and after 3 hours with some slighly screamy babies being drowned out by their even louder mothers, and an unfortunate 5 minutes of near suffocation following someone's fart being sucked into our overhead air con and being re-directed straight into my face, we arrived. We waited an hour for a lift from the airport, during which time a rotund, old Romanian approached Poppy to tell her she had very beautiful '?' and pointed to what I hope was Poppy's hair. As her hair was plaited to one side down the front, I can only hope it was her hair he was pointing to. It eventually became apparent our lift was a no-show, which resulted in us cruising through Bucharest with a taxi driver who had to drive one-handed in order to use the other to alternate between smoking, reading the address I'd scrawled in my journal on his lap, and phoning his mates for

Le Frembassy

directions. The lack of seatbelt fittings all added to the blind terror fun. Despite his frightening, one handed attempts at multi tasking we arrived in one piece to The Midland Hostel. It turned out the building opposite adorned with French flags was the French Embassy (funny that...). I can only hope the Fr-ambassadors were too preoccupied with baguettes and berets to notice me gawping out the bedroom window overlooking the Fr-embassy in just my undercrackers midway through changing for dinner. After a slightly massive detour through Bucharest's backstreets, we conveniently found ourselves in the Caru' cu Bera, Bucharest's oldest beer house. The beers were around a quid each, so it seemed rude not to indulge. In retrospect it'd have been wise to have splashed out on some side dishes, as a plate of chicken and mushroom sauce doesn't quite compensate for the 3 extortionate biscuits we sold our souls to pay for on the aeroplane, and which had provided our soul sustenance since 4am. I pitied our poor roomie at the hostel, whose initial introduction came in the form of me sitting once again in my underwear, swearing at my un-unlockable locker. Poor guy, perhaps the Frembassy will empathise with him and have me deported...